Social Technology

The dramatic nature of Plato's dialogues is delightfully evident in Symposium. The marriage between character and thought bursts forth as the guests gather at Agathon's house to celebrate the success of his first tragedy. With wit and insight, they all present their ideas about love - from Erixymachus' scientific naturalism to Aristophanes' comic fantasy. The unexpected arrival of Alcibiades breaks the spell cast by Diotima's ethereal climb up the staircase of love to beauty itself.

In How to Create a Mind, Ray Kurzweil presents a provocative exploration of the most important project in human-machine civilization: reverse-engineering the brain to understand precisely how it works and using that knowledge to create even more intelligent machines. Kurzweil discusses how the brain functions, how the mind emerges, brain-computer interfaces, and the implications of vastly increasing the powers of our intelligence to address the world’s problems.

When Ashley Shew became a self-described "hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn's disease and tinnitus," there was no returning to "normal." Suddenly well-meaning people called her an "inspiration" while grocery shopping or viewed her as a needy recipient of technological wizardry. Most disabled people don't want what the abled assume they want—nor are they generally asked. In vibrant prose, Shew shows how we can create better narratives and more accessible futures by drawing from the insights of the cross-disability community.

In 2010, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger released a photo-sharing app called Instagram, with one simple but irresistible feature: It would make anything you captured look more beautiful. The cofounders cultivated a community of photographers and artisans around the app, and it quickly went mainstream. In less than two years, it caught Facebook’s attention: Mark Zuckerberg bought the company for a historic one billion dollars when Instagram had only 13 employees.

We live in the age of disinformation - of organized deception. Spy agencies pour vast resources into hacking, leaking, and forging data, often with the goal of weakening the very foundation of liberal democracy: trust in facts. Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm, even before the 2016 election. But this is not new. The story of modern disinformation begins with the clash between communism and capitalism after the Russian Revolution.

A new industrial revolution has begun. Like mechanization or electricity before it, artificial intelligence will touch every aspect of our lives—and cause profound disruptions in the balance of global power, especially among the AI superpowers: China, the United States, and Europe. Autonomous weapons expert Paul Scharre takes listeners inside the fierce competition to develop and implement this game-changing technology and dominate the future.

• Do you get bored whenever you’re not using digital devices? • Do you feel like you need to access your social media accounts on your phone when things around you aren’t that interesting? • Do you often find yourself checking out your social media every now and then even when you’re talking to someone that’s right in front of you? • Do you feel like your day is not complete if you don’t use your digital devices or update your status on social media? If you said yes to any of these questions, then there is a chance that you may have formed some kind of dependence on ...

When scholars write the history of the world twenty years from now, what will they say was the most crucial development in the first few years of the twenty-first century? The attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the Iraq war? Or the convergence of technology and events that allowed India, China, and so many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing, creating an explosion of wealth in the middle classes of the world's two biggest nations?

The high-energy tale of how two socially awkward Ivy Leaguers, trying to increase their chances with the opposite sex, ended up creating Facebook. Eduardo Saverin and Mark Zuckerberg were Harvard undergraduates and best friends - outsiders at a school filled with polished prep-school grads and long-time legacies. They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women. The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively listenable story of innocence lost - and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way people relate to one another.

Dive into the enlightening depths of Embracing Neurodiversity in Education - an empowering journey of understanding, embracing, and teaching neurodivergent learners effectively. This remarkable eBook offers a comprehensive guide to everyone involved in the education and growth of neurodivergent children. This resource opens with an exploration of neurodivergence, laying a firm foundation of understanding this concept and the unique ways in which it influences learning. Each chapter subsequently unfolds to address essential aspects of navigating through educational landscapes, unraveling ...

Although there’s never been a better time to get into podcasting, with all the contradicting and often false information scattered all over the internet, it’s no wonder why so many people struggle to find a starting point when there are so many conflicting views over the best equipment, what launch strategy should be used, even editing. It can even create the illusion that starting a podcast is a daunting, time-consuming process.

An eye-opening investigation into how our ever-expanding urban highways accelerated inequality and fractured communities—and a call for a more just, sustainable path forward.

It’s a signal paradox of our times that we live in an information society but do not know how it works. And without understanding how our information is stored, used, and protected, we are vulnerable to having it exploited. In Fancy Bear Goes Phishing, Scott J. Shapiro draws on his popular Yale University class about hacking to expose the secrets of the digital age. With lucidity and wit, he establishes that cybercrime has less to do with defective programming than with the faulty wiring of our psyches and society.

Advertising, as one of the components of marketing, is a very crucial aspect of any business. According to Hootsuite, Facebook has 2.91 billion monthly active users and is the most used online social network worldwide. Whether you want to build brand awareness, gain a loyal following, or boost your sales, Facebook advertising will definitely help you achieve your business goals…but only if you know the right strategies. Get ready to reach thousands or even millions of your ideal customers through Facebook ads and grow your business exponentially. Start equipping yourself today!

America was once the world’s dream factory. We turned imagination into reality, from curing polio to landing on the Moon to creating the internet. And we were confident that more wonders lay just over the horizon: clean and infinite energy, a cure for cancer, computers and robots as humanity’s great helpers, and space colonies. (Also, of course, flying cars.) Science fiction, from The Jetsons to Star Trek, would become fact.

With over 800 million users and growing, TikTok is quickly becoming the most popular social media platform, leading influencers, brands and average joe’s to wonder “How can I use TikTok to grow my following?” If you haven’t used TikTok before, it may seem a bit frightening, or maybe even a bit weird and irrelevant. You find yourself thinking.... What even is this whole TikTok thing? Where do I start? I only see kids on the platform, will this work for my company? I can’t dance, how can I ever become an influencer?

From one of our leading technology thinkers and writers, a guide through the 12 technological imperatives that will shape the next 30 years and transform our lives. Much of what will happen in the next 30 years is inevitable, driven by technological trends that are already in motion. In this fascinating, provocative new book, Kevin Kelly provides an optimistic road map for the future, showing how the coming changes in our lives - from virtual reality in the home to an on-demand economy to artificial intelligence embedded in everything we manufacture.

In 2012, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance was just a handful of geeks working out of a scrappy four-bedroom apartment in Beijing. Today, it is the world’s fastest-growing tech behemoth worth in excess of $100 billion, unrecognizable from its humble beginnings.

We are entering a new technological age in which artificial intelligence and immersive media will transform society at all levels, mediating our lives by altering what we see, hear, and experience. If managed well, this could unleash a new age of abundance. If managed poorly, this technological revolution could easily go astray, compromising our privacy, autonomy, agency, and humanity. Two industry veterans provide a data-driven debate on whether the new world we're creating will be a technological utopia or an AI-powered dystopia and give guidance on how to aim for the best future we can.

Discover the power of blogging with "Blogging for Beginners" and gain financial freedom and escape the traditional corporate rat race. This book will provide listeners with the essential tools to create engaging content that has the potential to go viral, as well as invaluable tips on how to promote a blog across various social media channels.